January 30, 2016

Homelessness – 101

Every now and then somebody will ask me my opinion about homelessness. What is the problem? What is the solution? I’ve been saying the same basic thing for 20 years. Not that anybody ever listens to me.

The primary cause of our homeless problem is our exploding population growth. The California population has DOUBLED in just the last 45 years. From 20 million people to fucking 40 million people. And guess what? It’s projected to double AGAIN over the next 40 years to 80 million people.

We’re adding more people than we could ever hope to keep pace with adding new housing.

Until we address that issue, it’s just more useless talk.

And then they’ll ask me about our ever-rising cost of rent and housing. I’ll make another very obvious point: “It’s Economics – 101. Supply and Demand. Our exploding population growth is causing an ever-increasing DEMAND for more housing. As well as an ever-dwindling SUPPLY of available housing. Hence. The prices go up and up and up.”

Inevitably, a couple people will say to me: “Yes, Ace. What you’re saying makes perfect common sense.”

But, inevitably, there will also be all these other people who chime in with their “useless talk” (as I call it). Blathering on and on with their pointless nonsense. God it’s disheartening! How so many people just live in a blue fog.

Remember the game of Musical Chairs we used to play as kids. Where you had 5 people circling around 4 chairs. And the slowest person ended up without a chair. That’s an apt metaphor for our homeless problem.

But of course, inevitably, some genius will chime in: “So you see. It’s because of their behavior, because they’re slow, that they ended up chairless.” . . . Well, yeah, sure. There’s that. But the main reason is because there are 5 people and only 4 chairs.